


Paint Me Like

by RileyAnnaOlson



Category: Inventing van Gogh - Dietz
Genre: (nobody tell the MPAA), (two f-words so technically should be rated R i guess), Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Mid-Canon, hallie gets spes phthisica and hangs out with her nemesis, patrick is a useless invalid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 12:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyAnnaOlson/pseuds/RileyAnnaOlson
Summary: "Hallie saw the painting he’d done of Natalie Phelps, once. Patrick was flat on his back that week. Mono. Hallie definitely had it too--Patrick swore she was Patient Zero--but she had it like a literary consumptive: hectic with fever, aching for what life she could grasp before illness took her out. So, she dropped in on Natalie Phelps’s post-midterms house party. It was a comedown from “Victorian vampire castle masquerade ball,” or whatever her fevered brain dreamed up, but beggars and choosers."





	Paint Me Like

Hallie saw the painting he’d done of Natalie Phelps, once. Patrick was flat on his back that week. Mono. Hallie definitely had it too--Patrick swore she was Patient Zero--but she had it like a literary consumptive: hectic with fever, aching for what life she could grasp before illness took her out. So, she dropped in on Natalie Phelps’s post-midterms house party. It was a comedown from “Victorian vampire castle masquerade ball,” or whatever her fevered brain dreamed up, but beggars and choosers.

Natalie presided over the chaos in all radiance, shimmering in velvet, glowing with highlight; embodiment of the phrase “forever 21.” Hallie found her shouting blissfully at frat boys who had invited themselves through a friend of an acquaintance: a threat of police if they damaged the carpet--her favorite color carpet! (It was beige. An attractive beige, Hallie supposed, as beiges went.)

“Hallie! Aw, sweet girl, you came!” Natalie draped herself along the collar of Hallie’s jacket. Hallie remembered abruptly that Natalie had five inches on her, even minus wedges. “Look at you; God, what a babe.” She pinched Hallie’s cheek without a hint of irony. “I’d kill for color like that, bright eyes!” 

“Thanks. It’s the raging fever.” 

“Cuuuute! Let me get you a drink!” Hallie allowed herself to be led to the kitchen. With every light on, it looked like any suburbia kitchen--except the crowd watching Natalie’s housemate do body shots off Patrick’s old TA next to the toaster oven. Natalie threw open the fridge. The bodycon-clad audience shivered as one. “White Claw?”

“Ah, I’m not--what do you have that’ll get me more fucked up? I’m trying to forget my sore throat.”

Natalie shrieked approval at this. “Well, sure, why didn’t you say? I figured you’d want a light night since your BF isn’t here; I thought--”

“Nat, you can _ think?_” This was bratty, but Hallie hid her meanness behind a Natalie-bubbly smile, and it floated. Laughing and laughing, Natalie wiped mascara smudges from the corners of her eyes. Hallie felt herself shrink another inch inside the corduroy jacket she’d stolen from Patrick’s laundry. 

The taller girl dumped an Arizona sweet tea into a souvenir Cleveland Indians tumbler with a gurgle and topped off the other half with mango Malibu. “The tea is for your throat,” she said confidentially, pressing the concoction into Hallie’s hot hands. 

“Thanks.” Hallie pushed her hair out of her face. 

“No, thank you!” Natalie also pushed Hallie’s hair back. “Seriously, thank you for coming; I know this isn’t your _ scene_\--”

“What does that mean?”

“I just mean--”

“I go to parties. You’ve seen me--”

“I just mean like, not without Patrick, you know?” Hallie couldn’t answer. In the backyard, people cheered. “You’ve been in the neighborhood for a hot minute, and your dad was always like ‘ah, Hallie doesn’t really _ do _parties,’ but here you are even without Patrick. And like, that’s really sweet of you! Like that’s growth, right?” 

“When did my dad say I don’t do parties?” Hallie’s voice scratched. 

“He came out once YEARS ago, before I dropped out--did I tell you I’ve been modeling?”

“You did.”

“It’s so fulfilling--but anyway, yeah, your dad showed up to Michal Peralta’s housewarming party and we were like okay, he’s the cool dad. We _ love _him. I’m always like ugh, I wish Dr. Miller would adopt me--”

“Right, right, of course.” Hallie extricated herself from Natalie’s orange cream acrylic nails on the excuse of an ibuprofen hunt. 

Past a certain point in every party, Hallie ran out of social energy and she sought fresh air, or just empty air, until she could stand people again. That point came sooner when she had to hear how much everyone loved her dad. To be fair, this was on her for going to parties at the school where he was the favorite professor. 

Both porches were draped with crossfaded grad students. The little front porch cohort was debating cartoons. Back porch was talking a raccoon by the shed into shotgunning a Coors. Neither sounded calming. Hallie reentered the house and climbed the stairs.

The second-floor blue bathroom had another door at the opposite end. Hallie pushed it gently. Natalie’s bedroom. The girl literally transplanted her dorm decorations to this house. Fairy lights, a cute punny lightboard, the tapestry she probably bought at a poster sale to support her softball team’s trip to a Vegas tournament. The painting…

The painting didn’t come from dorm days. Hallie recognized the brushstrokes. Then she kind of hated herself for recognizing an artist by his brushstrokes. Jesus. But she did. Before the white signature under portrait-Natalie’s white arm grabbed her attention, even before she realized she knew the pattern on that mattress. 

It sat propped against a mirror, unhung. Maybe Natalie hadn’t made time to hang it; or it felt weird to give a place of honor to the portrait your intended one-night stand painted. Maybe the only screwdrivers in this house were made with orange juice. Hallie squatted beside the painting, dark head tilted as she examined it. 

Natalie: perfectly, admirably still; a skirt just like tonight’s, cream instead of orange. The paint of her shone like neon in rain against the black backdrop. Her figure curved against that terrible, springy mattress--in a very particular way. Hallie smirked. 

An hour later, she tipped her taxi driver and shouted, “I’m home, hypocrite!” 

“The fuck…” Patrick groaned from his bedroom. 

She tossed off her party clothes along the path from front door to bed. “You heard me.” 

“Unfortunately, I did,” he muttered, surrounded by crumpled Kleenex and a tipped-over bottle of acetaminophen.

“‘How was Natalie’s, Hallie?’” Hallie asked herself in her Patrick voice, pulling a paint-crusted pajama shirt over her head. “Oh, I had a grand old time,” she replied. “I saw the infamous paint-me-while-I’m-still-a-stranger portrait.”

“Did you?” 

“I did.” She tucked herself into bed. Patrick sensed her pleased-with-herself energy radiating somewhere just under his chin.

“It was crap. I didn’t want her back to keep sitting for it, so I did it all that night.”

“Oh, I can tell. Anything to confess about your stylistic inspirations?” 

“What are you--”

“Any particularly hated artists who nonetheless found their way into your composition?” 

“Hallie--”

“You painted her like a fucking Klimt girl, Patrick.” She’d been waiting to drop this discovery all night; she barely got the sentence out before dissolving into laughter.

“Hey. Hey!” he said when she kept laughing. “It...seemed fitting, all things considered.” 

“Oh my _ God_.” 

Hallie giggled until they fell asleep. When they woke the next morning, her mono had caught up to Patrick’s. 

Neither invalid left the warehouse until they ran out of cough-drop-adjacent substances a week later. On their trek through wet leaves to RiteAid, the brilliant autumn colors reminded Hallie of a Klimt painting. This reminded her of the other thing that had recently reminded her of a Klimt painting. Patrick, in turn, was reminded why he wanted Hallie to believe he only fucked Natalie, no painting involved. 


End file.
